


Pierce the Heavens With Your Spirit

by AndyAO3



Series: Angry Marshmallows and Sad Robots [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Disabled Lone Wanderer, Drabble, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 10:02:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4662522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something something, ends are beginnings blah blah. The inelegant prologue to a young marshmallow's journey. </p><p>Careful with this one. He looks bitey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pierce the Heavens With Your Spirit

**Author's Note:**

> I whipped this up last night for the lulz. It hasn't been beta'd and I've barely gone over it myself, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's mistakes. 
> 
> Ted's mouth makes him a walking T rating, I swear. HEY LOOK I ACTUALLY GOT A SERIES SET UP FOR IT NOW.

Ted knew. He  _knew_ , growing up, that he hadn't been born in the Vault. Couldn't have been. He'd known it from the first time he'd picked up one of his dad's medical books while he was laid up from another bout of who-the-fuck-knows. 

And maybe he'd even known it before that, too. Because-- well, shit. It was kinda hard to miss the fact that he was the only person in the vault with white hair under the age of eighty. Hard not to catch on to his dad's black hair, warm brown eyes, and tanned skin. Yeah, Butch didn't look much like his mom either, but at least Butch still had her blue eyes. Ted's eyes were as colorless and steely as the Vault itself, peering back at him in the mirror out of a face as pale as his bedsheets. Sometimes they'd even look pinkish in a certain light.

The book called it albinism. It was a mutation. And Ted knew that mutations didn't happen in Vaults. He was nine when he read it; he didn't tell anyone. It was his first real secret.

At sixteen, all the kids his age were assigned jobs. The test said Ted should be a marriage counselor; he'd looked up from his results at Mr. Brotch and asked flatly if that was  _really_ the best idea. He'd just gotten into a fight with Butch in the hall beforehand. His knuckles were bruised, the left side of his face was swollen enough to slur his speech, and there was blood on his lip and in his teeth. 

Mr. Brotch quietly amended the results so that Ted would be on a path towards being in charge of record-keeping and paperwork, including access to storage. "Good call," Ted had told him, smiling with those bloody teeth.

Ted's seventeenth year saw him dyeing his hair black. Or at least, Butch dyeing his hair for him. They had settled into an uneasy truce after one of their fights had led to a broken nose and pissing blood for a week for Butch (and bruised ribs plus a knife wound that came dangerously close to being hamstrung for Ted). Vault 101's two greatest disruptive influences decided that their mutual distrust for authority overshadowed everything else, and for a short time they were okay with each other.

Then Ted took Amata to the Vault's version of the prom, Butch got just bitter and drunk enough to insult her, and Ted kicked him in the junk like any good date would do. Right in front of Butch's then-girlfriend, Suzie. Butch did not get laid on prom night.

Ted didn't either, but that was mainly because Amata's dad had basically the worst timing in the history of ever. Overbearing dickhole. Amata giggled when Ted muttered that, at least, so. Not a total loss.

And then a day came when he was nineteen where alarms were blaring, feet were stomping in the halls, and there was way too much shouting for his liking. He groaned and stuffed the pillow over his head, mumbling "five more minutes, y'fuckin' dickbags" in sleepy protest.

He had no idea how much his secret from ten years before was going to bite him in the ass at that point. But that day - the day Amata barged in and literally dragged him out of bed by his feet, almost in tears out of fear and worry and frustration - his life was irrevocably changed.

That day, he killed someone for the first time, hands shaking as he clutched the bloodied bat in his hands and stared in horror at the caved-in skull of a Vault security officer he'd known all his life. That day, he watched Amata's own father set one of his guards - Suzie's dad, the guy who used to threaten Butch and glare at Tunnel Snake jackets whenever he saw them - on his fucking daughter, the kind of remorseless bullshit that only monsters pull. That day, Ted saw Amata cry more times than he had his entire life-- more times than he ever wanted to-- and even saw Butch come damn close.

When he finally got out the door of the Vault, he was too poleaxed by everything else that had happened to really process it fully. He didn't actually allow himself a breakdown until a good week afterward, when his first bouts of murderous sunburn had started to blister and peel. By then it was like a dam breaking, a week's worth of fumbling and scraping by outside all crashing down on him when the pain of countless bruises, endless scrapes, burnt skin, and sore feet had left him at his most vulnerable.

Afterward, he didn't feel better. Just sick. Then after that, exhausted. When that gave way, he realized that he was  _fucking pissed_ . And being pissed brought with it a glorious, newfound determination. 

He was going to fight this-- this  _thing_ . Whatever it was. Karma, fate, God, whatever. He was gonna fight it like he'd never fought before. And he was gonna  _kick its goddamn teeth in_ .


End file.
